


Shall I Meet You Over Yonder

by agatestones



Category: Justified
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:12:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agatestones/pseuds/agatestones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Aw," said Art again, and whisked his hand up beside his ear as if Tim's stream of information was just a tiny fly. And then he went to go sit in his office with the lights off and try to kill people with his mind, so. </p>
<p>How Raylan Givens faced an apocalypse. (Maybe a temporary one.) Title borrowed from a famous gospel song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shall I Meet You Over Yonder

It happened real fast. Only two days in, Raylan had thought better and told (okay, asked) Winona to take the baby and go to Harlan, just for safe-keeping. He had even said that she should take her sister. That Winona didn't argue with him meant he'd made the right decision.

So Raylan felt that he'd taken care of his business, and although he was up early and late doing liaison work with the state police and the FBI, on the whole he was handling the situation okay. Right up till he walked into Art's office in the morning and had a shotgun pointed at him.

It was just after dawn, and Raylan had slept the night through for once. You might even call him chipper, given the circumstances. He found Art dozing at his desk, a pump-action shotgun under one hand and his keys zip-tied to his belt. "Art, now that's no way for someone your age to be sleeping," Raylan opined loudly, and that was when the intemperate brandishing of shotguns occured. 

"Don't go startling an armed man," Art grumped, and lowered the street howitzer. He looked like hell, and when he stood up he looked like whatever was worse than hell. His knees made pops as he shuffled away from his desk.

Tim hustled into the office just then, in body armor and with a baseball cap backwards on his head. "Raylan, good, you're here," he said, and skidded over to the gun safe under his desk. He spun the lock as he talked over his shoulder. "You seen Rachel yet? I tole her to bring her ma and her nephew, but you know her."

Well, Raylan knew her well enough to know she wasn't just going to bring in her family for show-and-tell on Tim's say-so. Raylan knew how she kept her private business private, and how Tim generally respected that (most of all because of how bad Raylan was at it, which was a regular topic of discussion), so if Tim was bringing up her private business, then --

"All right, what the hell," Raylan asked, one hand on the butt of his service weapon.

"Bad got worse overnight," said Tim. He was breathless, as if he'd been running. "You obviously ain't read my texts."

Raylan had not been aware till that moment that his phone could receive texts. Texting was not generally a skill he considered of great importance in his law-enforcement career. (Also, he was a poor speller.) He pulled out his phone and examined it, and saw its silent alert to three text messages awaiting him. "Obviously not," he conceded. "So?"

"It's getting hot tonight. Maybe as soon as afternoon."

"You mean this ain't hot?" Raylan had been in the act of putting his hat on, but he put it down on his desk instead.

But Tim didn't have nothing to say to that, only shook his head with a weird look on his face.

There was something Raylan liked about Tim: he was even-keeled. Hard to bother. He had that solitary calm to him, that you wanted in a sniper or an intelligence officer. He could sit on a roof in the rain and eat his string cheese for six hours and then when you needed him he was in your earpiece like the voice of God. Right now Tim was putting together his sniper rifle with hands that didn't shake, but moved faster than they usually needed to. The lines in his forehead were deep like ravines. A noise behind them startled Tim pretty bad, and he whipped his head around toward the door.

Rachel was in the doorway, with am arm around the shoulder of her nephew. Her ma was behind her with a suitcase in either hand. Raylan stared at them. Rachel lowered her head like shame, but then raised it again and guided her family into the conference room. Her chin was high by the time she leaned out and asked, "They got through to you finally?"

There was nothing to say to that, so Raylan said nothing. He watched mystified as Art handed her another shotgun, and then a portable radio. He tossed one to Tim, who caught it one-handed and clipped it to his belt without a pause, and then tossed one to Raylan. "All right," Raylan said at last. "Does Washington know?"

"Who you think I been calling all night?" Art snapped, and turned back to his office. "And the governor, and the mayor, and my sainted mother if only Heaven had a land line. Speaking of which, call your ex-wife."

Raylan did not believe in shame, so he just came on out and said, "I sent her off two days ago."

Art gave him a strange look, his head back like he was trying to read without his half-glasses, and then nodded and turned away. Rachel was settling her family in over in the conference room, just to take off jackets and have a Coke, not to stay. Raylan thought about those suitcases and then thought about what you do with a grandmother and a gawky ten-year-old child when things get hot.

Raylan had a couple things in his desk he didn't want destroyed (if that was really how things were going to go). Maybe he'd give them to the baby some day, if he lived through the next week, and Rachel could keep them safe wherever she was going. He pulled out an old picture or two and one of his Aunt Helen's bracelets and realized that was all he had with him. Everything else was in storage here, or somewhere at Winona's place, or back in Harlan County.

But it was not entirely clear what they was supposed to _do_ till things got hot, aside from fret and wait around. Tim readjusted his baseball cap just so for about the third time, which was how Raylan could tell that he'd checked over his rifle ten times already and did not want to mess with it further for fear of messing it up.

"Say," asked Raylan, to distract him. "How'd you know?"

Tim set his mouth in a slim straight line and pulled out his phone. "Old buddies. Some of 'em stayed in the Army. Some of 'em keep their eyes open." And so Tim read off new updates from his phone to his colleagues, not loud enough for Rachel's kin to hear it in the conference room. It was mostly texts about troop movements and new alarming protocols, but sometimes he read out stuff from the Twitter too. Raylan was not sure how serious a service called _the Twitter_ should be taken, but it was the first to report about the shots fired at Ft. Campbell, so maybe it wasn't all bad.

Ft. Campbell was on the other side of the state, but Ft. Knox was kissing right up next to Louisville, not but two hours from here.

"Aw," said Art, after Tim read that one out loud, "this is bullshit."

Tim did not seem to understand that Art calling something bullshit was not the same as Art calling something implausible. "I got texts from guys I ain't heard from in _years_ , Art. They're all acting like it's the night before goddamned Normandy."

"Aw," said Art again, and whisked his hand up beside his ear as if Tim's stream of information was just a tiny fly. And then he went to go sit in his office with the lights off and try to kill people with his mind, so. Tells you what kind of perspective Art had on the situation at that particular moment.

Rachel watched it all in silence, those big liquid eyes bouncing from one fellow to another. Art didn't ask her what she thought and she didn't tell him. When the conversation fell silent, her gaze stayed on Raylan, though he hadn't spoke last. She could slay people with those eyes. Raylan didn't know what she wanted and when she turned to look back toward the conference room and her nephew he could not have said whether she got it.

The phone rang in Art's office and they all stood stiff. They could not hear the content of Art's conversation, just the irascible way he answered at first and how he went quiet. He hung up the phone and nobody had moved.

"Ft. Knox just went on alert," Art announced, like a groan.

"Well don't that fuck all," said Raylan, and watched Tim take off his baseball cap and put it back on exactly the same.

Rachel stood among them, quiet as always. "We're going, then?"

Raylan put his hat on, the way you do when you're saying goodbye. Tim took his hands off his cap -- good thing, or it would be worn to rags pretty soon -- and turned to cross the bullpen. Art said nothing at all, which was a pretty bad sign all by itself. 

"Yeah," said Tim, as he came back towards them with his wallet in hand. "Better too soon than too late."

"You got this all worked out," Art muttered to himself, his face red, and patted down his pockets.

Raylan watched Tim cross the room back and forth, building a pile of things on the edge of his desk. Couple of blank warrants, two boxes of shotgun shells, two piles of new twenties to which Art added several crumpled bills. They wouldn't lie flat, and flapped half-folded on the table. Tim fetched all the bottled water from the fridge, and then the Cokes, and then a pair of Marshal Service travel kits, the ones with the road flares and the Caution tape and the extra leg-irons.

Rachel stood still and watched. The two people with suitcases in the conference room were all the family she had, or would lay claim to. No kin to put her up a spell. Raylan asked her, quiet: "You got someplace to go? There's always room in Harlan County."

Rachel raised her chin. That round face, that small body, her presence despite her size. "Raylan," she said, plain, "you're coming with us."

"I am?" he asked, stumped. Art's face was even redder than before and Tim paused in the middle of packing up the kits. They both looked at him as guilty as Adam in the bushes. "What the hell, Art?"

Tim said nothing and headed back toward the far wall to fetch a pair of radio chargers. Art crossed his arms and said, "You got a son, son. Ain't no way you going to leave that child an orphan on account of some crazy revolutionary shit. This is America."

"I am not walking away from the job --"

Now, let it be said, Tim had the personality of a sniper, which is to say he spoke softly and carried a real big stick. Raylan had never yet seen him yell, never even seen him get more than a tick past irritated, despite considerable provocation (much of it from Raylan himself). So to see Tim turn in his best impression of a volcano in the middle of the Marshal Service bullpen was somewhat startling. "Yes you fucking are, _Raylan Givens_ ," he busted out, on the far side of the room but on his way back quickly. "I got buddies buying us time, maybe with their lives, and you are _not_ going to shit all over their caution with some kind of bullshit testosterone Wyatt Earp fantasy."

He got up in Raylan's grill, so close his forehead poked Raylan's hat back on his head. Raylan could count his crooked bottom teeth. Tim's eyes were blue-gray, dishwater-colored. They were like laser sights in his face. "You and Rachel are getting outta Dodge while you can, and you are protecting those children while all this blows over, and when you fucking get back here in one fucking piece, _then_ you can fucking decide whether you coulda fixed it all by shooting somebody. So just shut your damn hillbilly mouth and get going, will you?"

It was possible Tim had been in the Army. There were not many other situations in which he would learn to swear so fluently. Raylan was more fascinated by it than intimidated, but he'd begun to get the sense both from Tim's frenetic movement and from Art's lack of same that the next step in this process was hog-tying one Raylan Givens and dumping him in the trunk of Rachel's car. The six-hour drive to Harlan County would not be very comfortable under such conditions.

"What the hell," he said, as mild as he could between clenched teeth. "I ain't been back to the family homestead in awhile."

And so that was how Raylan had a packed travel kit shoved into his arms and was marched down the back stairs to the parking lot, Rachel and her family ahead and Tim last. Tim carried the shotguns, three of them under one arm. With his free hand he reached out now and then and touched Raylan on the back: directing his movement, or just reminding him that somebody was following behind. Outside, the sun was weak behind thin wintry clouds. The parking lot was mostly empty.

"You mind I pick up somebody on my way outta town?" Raylan asked, and gestured at his car. He liked to make clear the idea that he could circle back and rejoin Tim and Art if he had a mind to, but that he did not have a mind to at this time. Tim looked at him a little funny -- clearly he'd got both ends of that message -- and said nothing. Rachel led her ma and her nephew over to her own car, and left Raylan at his.

With the child and his grandmother in the back seat of one car, Tim redistributed the weapons. "A shotgun for each of you. I guess you'll want it in the trunk, Rachel."

"I guess," she said, with no expression on her face.

"I'll put mine under the seat," Raylan said.

Tim faced him, eye to eye, up close. Raylan faced him back, and they stood that way a second. Tim broke it first, by pulling the holster off his belt and pushing it into Raylan's chest. "You'll need this too."

"What the hell are you talking about," groused Raylan. "Ain't going to be a shooting war. Ten days from now it'll all be over and you'll be feeling foolish wondering where I mislaid your service weapon."

"I goddamn well hope so," said Tim, and allowed the holster to be pressed back against his own chest.

"I'm fond of Art," Raylan told him. "Don't let him do nothing stupid."

Tim didn't answer that. He turned around and hugged Rachel tightly and then he let her go. "Get on. 'Fore it's dark."

It was ten in the morning, but never mind that. Raylan and Rachel stood in the vees of the open doors of their cars and eyed each other. 

"You remember how to get there?" he asked.

"I remember," she said.

There wasn't much else to be said, so they didn't say nothing. Rachel got in her car and Raylan got in his. She pulled out onto the street without looking back, and was gone.

Raylan backed out of his parking space and took one last look in the rearview. Tim stood there alone in the parking lot, shotgun in one hand, alert. He turned away to head back inside, and there was nothing for Raylan to look at. He drove off, not too fast, although there was not a traffic cop this side of St. Louis that didn't have better things to do than hand out speeding tickets on a day like today.

The streets did not overly reflect the situation. Couple broken storefront windows, and a mess in the parking lot of the Walmart, but that wasn't any different from yesterday. Raylan drove down the streets of a suburban neighborhood and it still looked picture-perfect, the lawns all mowed and flower beds in front of the houses, although more window-shades were pulled than not. Nobody'd given _them_ an evacuation order.

The house where Raylan pulled over had a long low porch in front and a minivan parked in front of that. Still home, then. Raylan sat in the front seat of his sedan and considered how to approach this when the front door slammed open and a passel of children started running at him from the house.

There was three of them, and their foster-mother on their heels, calling at them to move smartly and keep together. They all had backpacks on and lunchboxes clutched in their little-kid hands. In dull amazement Raylan watched the oldest child pull open the back seat door and push the younger ones in, all mashed together on the bench seat. Back on the porch, someone was closing the door.

A man with a baby strapped to his chest and a duffel bag dragging at his heels stepped off the porch while a small brown-haired figure locked up the house. Foster-father, right. Raylan remembered he'd had a conviction some years back but not his name. He paced around the back of the car and automatically Raylan popped the trunk for him. He felt the thud as the trunk slammed closed, and a lurch as the man clumb into the back seat with all his little children and his wife.

That small brown-haired figure turned around and dashed toward Raylan. Her jacket was nicer than anything she'd owned in Harlan County, and her sneakers cleaner. Her hair was in a tidy, practical ponytail. She had a backpack too, and a pillowcase besides, that looked like it had all the deadly implements you can improvise in a house all stuffed inside. She skittered in front of the car and slid into the passenger seat beside Raylan and pulled the door shut behind her. Raylan glanced at all the seatbelt violations in the back seat in his rearview, and pulled his eyes away to see the girl up close.

"I knowed you'd come," said Loretta McCready, and her face was a blaze of anger and fear. Her freckles might as well have been sparks. "I knowed you'd come for me, and I made them ready."

It was true, her foster-family was ready. They'd put themselves into the custody and the back seat of a federal marshal without a by-your-leave or a word of protest. The two parents were staring at Raylan with alert, frightened faces.

What was he going to do, throw 'em out? "Course I come," he said, and put his eyes on the road as he put his hand on the gearshift. "I don't leave nobody behind." As he said that he thought uncomfortably of Tim, alone in the parking lot in the chill morning as they drove away into hiding. But Loretta interrupted that thought by putting her little hand -- as big as it was going to get, honestly, she was fifteen now -- over his on the gearshift.

"I knowed it," she said, low the way a woman does when she doesn't want to cry in company.

"Course I come, girl," said Raylan, softer the second time. Together they threw the car into Drive, and he pulled back onto the road. There was nobody else driving at a time like this, with everybody stuck fascinated in front of their televisions or maybe waiting it out in their storm cellars and air-raid shelters. Raylan left the radio off so the only sound besides the engine was the scared breathing out of the back seat and Loretta's quiet sobs.

They pulled onto the highway and Raylan steered them home toward Harlan County. As many times as he left, that was how many times he'd been back, called or drug or gone running. Beside him, Loretta got ahold of her hiccups but she didn't let go his hand.

He considered himself a man of great manual dexterity. If he could drive while firing his service weapon (not generally advised, but necessary on occasion), no reason he could not drive with his hand on the gearshift all the way there. It was only six hours away.


End file.
